The invention is directed to a food cutting guide and more particularly to a pizza cutting guide to facilitate cutting equal size slices that ensure the nutritional values of the slices are equal, reducing waste of food and thereby increasing food section sales and sales profits.
Pizza shops or restaurants, especially “New York style” pizza shops, often sell pizza by the slice. These pizzas are sliced into large slices, for example, six large 60° angle slices. Customers select which piece to purchase, and, due to human nature, they will typically choose the largest slice to get the most for their money. This practice leads to the smallest pieces going unsold, being sold for a lesser price, or possibly being discarded, resulting in much waste and loss of revenue. On average, the 2 smallest slices out of every 6 slices, or ⅓ of pizzas by the slice, are thrown out. Ensuring that all 6 slices are the exact same size will reduce or eliminate the discarding of the smallest, unsold slices, and thus result in increased revenue and profits.
Often times, pizza is cut by hand and usually under the stress of time because the pizzas are hot and need to remain hot so that they can be delivered hot, as well as the usual stress of a business where time is money and tasks need to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. In cutting pizzas by hand, there is a desire to produce equal slices, but the lack of human skill and effort and the haste to get the job done lead to the achievement of less than equal slices.
Further, public and private schools, sports teams, booster clubs, children party centers, hospitals, nursing homes and institutions all have a need for pizzas and/or food items which are cut into equal slices for lunch programs, meals, fund raisers, pizza by the slice sales, and the like. When there are equal slices, there are fewer leftovers due to odd shapes or undersized or oversized slices. Thus, there is a need for a cutting guide to ensure that different size diameter pizzas (e.g., an 8 or 14 inch diameter pizza) can be cut into equal size slices.
There is also a need for determining the nutritional values of the food items, reducing waste of the food items and increasing profits of food item sales. Various prior art attempts have been made to develop products for cutting food items/segments/portions into equal slices and/or shapes. Some of those prior art devices have focused on a guide that holds the pizza, while others have focused on prior art devices for cutting the pizzas. However, all of those prior art attempts have various limitations and disadvantages, and the present invention provides an improvement over these prior art devices.
Some prior art devices have pointed protrusions, for example molded into the guide so that the pizza is held by the protrusions during the cutting process. However, these protrusions would hamper sliding the pizza off of the guide into a delivery box as often is required.
Further, nutritional studies indicate that many popular foods eaten in the US are wedge-shaped (e.g., pizza, cakes, and pies), and these foods affect the amount of saturated fat and sugar that are consumed by individuals and that they are associated with degenerative health conditions. Thus, it is important that amounts of wedge-shaped and other food sizes reported in food consumption surveys be as accurate as possible (See e.g., Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Mar. 14, 2006). However, the according to many scientific articles, standard techniques for measuring portion sizes of wedge shaped foods are often inaccurate and therefore the invention discussed herein can be used to eliminate many of those inaccuracies.
Notwithstanding these prior art devices for cutting equal pizza slices and related applications, there remains a need for method and system for determining nutritional values, reducing the waste of food items and increasing profits in the sale of food items utilizing an equal slice cutting device, and the like.